Life in the Bus Lane

Well it would be if there had been a photo credit.

Scouts find out policing is a riot

After a week at scout camp, it was nice to return to civilisation and be able to have a shower and clean myself properly of a weeks worth of accumulated grime. Camp went reasonably well. The weather wasn’t great until today, and we had rivers of water running through the camp during one rather heavy downpour, but the scouts seemed to enjoy it, despite the Ticks (Tim had 11), and the cooking (they claimed the Army 24 hour ration packs were nicer). All that remains now it to pack everything away, and work my way through the mountain of washing accumulated over the last week. Sleeping in a proper bed tonight will be a nice luxury after a week of sleeping bags and airbeds.

Whilst I was away, the council saw fit to paint a selection of white lines in the parking bay near the house to delineate the spaces. Quite why they felt this to be necessary I don’t know. We’ve coped perfectly well without the lines in the 8 years or so that I’ve been living here, and no doubt for many years before that.

I’m attempting to pack for scout camp at the moment, but can’t escape the paranoid thought that no matter what I do, I’ll leave something vitally important at home. I keep wandering round and throwing various things into rucksacks or kit bags, hoping that by the time I leave there will be sufficient stuff in there to last me a week.

I managed to do what I hope was the last of my kit shopping last weekend, ending up with a new 30L Deuter rucksack, along with a couple of metal bottles for holding meths and stuff. The vital shopping for chocolate, crisps, and alcohol, was done after work tonight.

Having not done a full weeks camp for 12 years or so, I’m planning to camp in luxury this year. There will be a 4-man tent just for myself, along with table, chairs, espresso pot, air bed, all the trimmings. All being well it will allow me to get to the end of the week with mind and body still vaguely intact.

Shame the weather looks like it’s going to be shit though.

….on the bike.

First proper ride tonight for a week, so went for a gentle 20 mile spin on the cross bike. The first 5 miles were hell, but it got better after that. Stopped towards the end as we were meant to be sorting some kit out ready for scout camp at 19:30. 20 minutes later no-one had arrived so I headed home for a shower and some food.

Well that was quite probably one of the dullest AGM’s I’ve ever been to, it might have been better if more than 6 people knew it was taking place. At least I fitted a nice 15.5 mile ride in by taking the very scenic route to get there. Bikes are great etc.

Tomorrow sees the builders arrive to remove the roof from my lean-to and replace it, so currently the house is full of bikes that have nowhere else to live. Hopefully the work will only take a couple of days and it’ll be back to normal bike storage-wise, or maybe even better than normal.

Thursday night I got a phone call asking if I could help take the Explorer Scouts camping this weekend due to a lack of leaders. Semi-reluctantly I agreed, partly as it was only for 24 hours or so. Saturday lunchtime rolled around and I arrived at my old scout hut to meet the others. There were only 4 scouts going, and 3 leaders, so I’m not quite sure why I was needed. We drove to the the site and set up camp which didn’t take us too long. The afternoon activity was raft building, the aim was to build a fire on a raft and burn through the finish line down stream. In the end only one raft still had a fire going when it crossed the line, however it didn’t burn through.

The evening meal was chicken risotto, which was actually quite nice for camp food, followed by cake and custard. A late night run to the chip shop was well timed to coincide with them closing, so we stuffed ourselves again on fish, sausage, burgers, and chips, most of which was free. The only downside was that it started raining about 7pm, and didn’t really stop until around 6am, then it started again about 10:30 and carried on until long after I got home. This meant breaking camp in pouring rain, which is always fun, however the drying of most of the tents is fortunately someone elses problem, I just have to find somewhere to dry mine.

In all, apart from the incessant rain, it was a good weekend. I might even be pursuaded to do it again one day.

It’s pouring with rain and freezing cold. So I rode to scouts and back. I think I might manage to dry out and warm up by about easter.

It was a nice evening, so I decided to take the scenic route to Scouts which takes me about an hour. I rolled down the hill to the hut just before 7:30 and thought it a bit odd that none of the lights were on. Even more odd was that there were no kids milling around waiting to get it. 7:35 and I get a phone call which says “Hi Rich, we’re at Bannerdown in case you’ve got lost”. I calmly pointed out that they’d neglected to tell me that we weren’t meeting at the hut, and that I couldn’t be arsed to ride up to the top of another big hill when my lights probably wouldn’t last long enough for me to get home again.

At least I got a nice 12 mile ride out of it.

Quiet day at work. Popped down to the LBS after work to fix their till/computer again, gave me a chance to ride the Inbred for the first time in months. Bought a Endura Windtex jacket whilst I was in there as I needed a decent windproof top. Got home and started to rebuild my broken laptop. Rode to scouts and back giving the new top a good test. I was plenty warm enough with just a baselayer and the Windtex as a top layer. got home to a still-broken laptop so started to rebuild it again. Currently I’m sampling a bottle of Australian and trying to bring the laptop uptodate with patches and new applications, a somewhat sluggish task.

I think I will attempt to sleep all weekend.

The rugby was certainly tense this morning. England had the better run of the first half, but then seemed to field a bunch of morons for the second half, ending up with them giving a stupid penalty away allowing the Aussies to equal the game at 14-14 in the 80th minute. Extra time beckoned and we took the lead 17-14 in the first 10 minute session, then more stupidity let them tie the game at 17-17 with less than three minutes to play. However the last two minutes of play brought out some classic play with an almost perfect lead-in to a perfect drop-goal from Jonny Wilkinson. It must have been the most nerve-wracking 60 minutes of my life after half-time, but at least we came out as world champions. It was nice to see Bath win as well this afternoon, even if all the points did come courtsey of Olly Barkely’s foot, and with Bath being a man down for most of the game.

This evening was a Wine and Wisdom evening to raise money for the local scouts. We were a bit crap at the quiz coming 3rd out of 4 teams, but we mad up for it in the raffle, where I think I could have won 6 over the course of the evening. I settled for one prize in the end.